IF YOU GO

EARLIER TOUR STOPS

PURCHASE, N.Y.: Purchase College, State University of New York, July 16, 20

NEW YORK CITY: Carnegie Hall, July 22

LENOX, MASS.: Tanglewood, July 24

BOONE, N.C.: Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts, July 26

CHICAGO: Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, July 28

TETON VILLAGE, MONT.: Walk Festival Hall, July 30

SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY: Green Music Center, Weill Hall, Today

THE PROGRAM

BERNSTEIN: Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story"

BRITTEN: Violin Concerto, Op. 15

SAMUEL ADAMS: "Radial Play," commissioned by Carnegie Hall

MUSSORGSKY: "Pictures at an Exhibition"

GUEST ARTISTS: David Robertson, conductor; Gil Shaham, soloist

WATCH AND HEAR

YOUTUBE: The National Youth Orchestra of the USA has a channel with two dozen performance clips, video postcards and some jokes, such as "Low Brass in the Wild," which shows trombone and tuba players stalking a violinist like animals in a National Geographic special.

FACEBOOK: The National Youth Orchestra's timeline has audio from the Carnegie Hall concert.

Liam Glendening thinks it’s weird that his first Carnegie Hall experience was playing it.

The 17-year-old Redlands High School student is having a summer vacation like no other Inland Empire teenager.

Liam, a trombone player, is on tour with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States,120 young musicians formed by the famed New York City concert hall.

Liam is the first Inland Empire musician to be accepted into the orchestra, which was founded in 2012 by Carnegie Hall’s educational arm, the Weill Music Institute. The ensemble is composed of 16- to 19-year-olds who are not yet full-time college students.

The orchestra’s first tour, in 2013, was to Russia, and it will visit China in 2015, but the 2014 tour is introducing the ensemble to the United States.

Adventures have included staying in dormitories at a New York college during two weeks of rehearsal; the first selfie-taking moments on the Carnegie Hall stage; performing for Yo-Yo Ma and meeting him backstage at Tanglewood; and visiting North Carolina, Chicago and the Grand Tetons.

The tour ends Monday at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The teens are trained by and perform with professionals. This year’s conductor is David Robertson, music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the guest soloist is Gil Shaham, whom Liam called “probably the most amazing violinist I’ve ever been in the same room with.”

On stage, all the teens wear black jackets, red slacks and red-white-and-blue Converse sneakers. Robertson and Shaham also wear the sneakers.

The repertoire was chosen in part to showcase every section of the orchestra, said Doug Beck, director of the Weill Music Institute’s artist training programs.

“Symphonic Dances, the Bernstein from ‘West Side Story,’ is probably the best part that I have,” Liam said. “It’s constant playing, which is rare for low brass players. Usually we play like 10 notes in the first movement and 20 notes in the last movement.”

Touring is not entirely new to Liam. Last summer he was a member of the Claremont Young Musicians Orchestra, which went to Munich; Salzburg, Austria; and Rome.

Liam began his musical training on the cello when he was in kindergarten, he said, speaking in a phone interview from Teton Village, Wyo., where the orchestra performed Wednesday.

He recently switched to the trombone, and between the brass instrument and his schoolwork, he said he hasn’t had much time for strings.

“You hear about the violinists who are taking concertos by 4, or something ridiculous. That’s not physically possible on a trombone, because you have to be a certain size and have a certain lung capacity to even think about it.”

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